Tonight I watched the first episode of HBO’s True Blood, a vampire series starring Anna Paquin as a waitress in a small Louisiana town who meets and becomes enamored with a vampire, Bill, played by Stephen Moyer. Here’s the trailer:

Based on a series of novels by Charlaine Harris, True Blood imagines that vampires have “come out of the coffin” and live among us. This has been made possible by the invention of a blood substitute, Tru Blood, which has rendered vampires’ need for human blood obsolete. I’ve never heard of, much less read, the novels upon which this series is based, but I like vampire series in general, so I thought I’d give it a look.

Overall, I like this first episode. It’s not great or anything close to great. It’s derivative. And many of the characters seem like caricatures rather than developed entities. But even so, I enjoyed this first episode. It seems to have promise as an enjoyable bit of fluff.

(more…)